So basically that was a miracle

Hey!

It does seem like it was forever ago that we did the Drowsy Chaperone. Seriously, it's freaking me out.

And it's super exciting that the girls from my Sunday School class have put in/are working on their missionary applications!

So, this week went pretty well. We still didn't get up to the 20-lessons goal, but we did better than last week, and I feel like we've been doing a lot of good work. I'll just go through some major events of the week:

Tuesday we were able to see a pretty less-active family. They're super great--they have like seven kids, and the contrast between them is pretty great--The littler kids, which are a pair of 4-year-old(?) twin boys, and a seven(?)-year-old girl, have like literally infinite energy. Usually when we're there, they are sprinting around the house chasing each other. Then, the older kids are just super like sedate, but also pretty awesome. Anyways, we're trying to help them understand why it's important to come to church, and really get them that motivation to come.

Wednesday, we got to go to the Temple! It was super great, as always. We also met with a family of investigators that are pretty great. The problem is, there's something stopping them from coming to church, and we haven't really figured out what it is yet. So, hopefully we'll be able to help them with that.

Thursday was a pretty great day. We did service all the way up in my former area (we're allowed to go up there because it's part of our ward, and we wanted to kind of shake things up), so it was pretty fun to see some familiar sights and do some familiar service, up at this place we went to a couple of times called Kidz Quiltz. Also, we went looking for this one less-active member. He didn't live at the address given any more, but then we were actually able to talk to the people that did live there, and they let us in, and they came to church on Sunday! So basically that was a miracle right there.

Saturday, we went on exchanges, so I was with our district leader, in his area. That was pretty cool, to just see the way other missionaries work, and find things to learn from that. So, for "excercise" in the morning, we went to a park nearby their apartment, and threw this boomerang that the district leader somehow got. It was pretty dang fun, but the really interesting thing is: While we were throwing it, some guy who was walking his dog came up to us and asked if he could try--he ended up asking us why we were out so early, which led to us talking about how we were missionaries, and now he's a potential investigator. He's English speaking, so I probably won't ever see him again, but it was a really cool experience nonetheless.

Anyways, that was pretty much the week. Pretty great, and we're going to maybe have an even better week this week! The Spanish is still hard, but I feel like I'm improving--I feel like most of what's holding me back is just myself. I need to build self-confidence in myself so I can really have the confidence to just speak up when I need to. So still improving on that. But things are going well.

I love you all, and miss you.

Love,

Peter

It did rain on Sunday...

Hey! Happy President's Day to you as well!

It's great to hear that everything is going well in Oregon, that the snow's melted, and that things are getting back to as normal as is possible.

And, it sounds like the Olympics are going well, and that you're all having fun watching them--it's pretty bizarre over here, we really haven't heard anything about them. I guess the Spanish members aren't as interested in the Winter Olympics as I am :).

So, this week was pretty good. We weren't able to teach as much as last week, but we did some good work, and were able to find some new people to teach that hopefully we'll be able to follow up with this week.

Things were slowed down a little bit over the weekend by my companion suddenly falling ill, which made it so we couldn't do a ton of work either Saturday or Sunday. We were able to work for about an hour both days, although we were also able to make it to a service project on Saturday--it was the one, if you remember, where we go to retirement homes and sing songs to seniors, which was pretty great. On Sunday, we weren't even able to make it to church, which was sad, but it was okay, a couple of members were able to bring us the sacrament, which was very nice of them.

But so aside from the whole sickness thing, we were able to get quite a bit done. The family we're focusing the most on right now is really good friends of a family in the ward who introduced them to the church. They're super great, are really eager to learn more about the gospel, and are reading together in the Book of Mormon, which is super cool. There are two boys, ages 12 and 10, who we're also teaching, and then they also have a 4(?) year-old daughter, who's hilarious. The ten-year-old is super good at drawing, at least cartoon characters, so he's been drawing characters from Adventure Time and Regular Show for us. We're really trying to emphasize the importance of coming to church with them, because, while they've been super open and friendly (I mean, they had us over for dinner on Friday, for goodness' sake), they haven't been able to make it to church yet, and we really don't know why.

To find new people to teach, we've mostly been going through the area book, which is like the record of all the missionary work that's gone on in that area in the past five years or so, and identifying people who were at one time interested in the gospel, and then tracking them down. So far, it's brought at least some success--we were able to teach one former investigator last week, and set up appointments for this week with a few more.

Oh, and then yesterday, on P-day, we had our "zone p-day", which is the one P-day set apart of the transfer that we're allowed to hang out as a zone, because normally we aren't allowed to hang out with sisters on P-day, because stupid missionaries in the past have done stupid things, I guess. But so that was a lot of fun--we played soccer, kickball, ultimate, and just generally had a good time. It's kind of bizarre--I left this zone only like 9 weeks ago, and then came back 2 weeks ago, and there are so few missionaries that are still here. I think there are like 5 still here from when I was in the Zone last time, out of the something like 25 missionaries.

We have zone P-days at different places, depending on things like the weather. Normally, we'd have it in a church building, but yesterday, it was warm enough for us to have it at a park. It took us a while to get to from here, but it was a lot of fun. It's pretty crazy, although at times like these, you have to remember that two weeks ago, the temperature was below zero. Apparently winter extends like into April here, so that's something to look forward to.

It did rain on Sunday, which was, I think possibly the first time I've seen it rain while I've been here in Colorado. Bizarre.

Oh, I completely forgot, we had Zone Conference this Wednesday, which was great. The main focus of the training we got from President Toombs was making sure that everyone we teach has a correct understanding of who God really is. It was great--I think a lot of the time we just skim over that, but the knowledge of who God the Father is is so integral to our faith that we can't afford to let it slip by when we're teaching someone. It was a pretty great reminder. Sometimes it's good to just go back to the basics--that Heavenly Father loves us, and then everything else goes back to that.

Tomorrow we get to go to the Temple, so that should be really great. I'm looking forward to it, but maybe not the part where we have to get up at 4:30 in the morning to make it there on time. But it should be great!

Love,

Peter

There are, you know, snowplows

Hey, it's, as always, great to hear from you guys!

Wow. That's a lot of snow, especially for Oregon! I imagine things'll probably be closed for a little while longer... It's been fairly snowy in Colorado, but I don't think it's been as bad as it is in Oregon, esp. because there are, you know, snowplows :). Sounds pretty crazy.

I wouldn't say it's "tiring" to teach in Spanish, because mostly I haven't been doing a ton of teaching. My companion has mostly been covering that, and I've been putting in a few remarks--not to say that I haven't been teaching or anything, but I haven't been as active a participant in lessons as I was in English wards. I feel a little bit like I'm in training again, but it's obviously different in several ways. I feel like I should be able to get out of the like less-teaching shell within the next couple weeks, and then things should be pretty normal.

It was super cool to go to Church in Spanish! I can understand ~90% of what's being said, so the difference is mostly just cultural. One bizarre thing: We have like "backwards" church, where we have Priesthood/RS first, then Sunday School, and then Sacrament Meeting last. Probably Sacrament meeting was the most different--There were only two talks: one from a member of the ward, and one translated one from a high councilor. The first one went way long--it was the first time in a long time that I've seen a bishopric member get up to tell the speaker to wrap it up, and it also included a lot more um audience participation than any talk I've ever seen before. So that was kind of awesome.

This week has been pretty great! We've been able to teach a lot--more lessons in this week than I've taught my whole mission--I think we taught a total of 22 discussions. We mostly met with a lot of less active members, recent converts, and active members, but we also had the opportunity to teach a couple of investigators, one of which is a four-person family, who've committed to be baptized soon, which was really cool. We also did a lot of finding work, trying to find more people to teach. We mostly went through a bunch of former investigators and potential investigators, trying to set up times this week to meet with them. We had some success with that, and should have a lot of investigator lessons this week, which should be great.

It's been nice to be in a car--we've been able to get in between appointments and activities a lot quicker than we ever were on bikes, which is nice. The heating is also a big plus--when you step out of the car and you can feel your eyebrows freezing, it really makes you grateful to have the car :).

We've been doing some service too, at two different places. One is a thrift store called ARC, and the other place is this retirement home place, where we get together with a bunch of other missionaries and sing hymns and old songs (e.g. bicycle built for two) that I think are intended to remind the people of their childhoods or something like that.

All in all, it's been a pretty great week. The apartment is pretty tiny, but it works, and we don't spend too much time in it, anyways. The members have been super great to work with, and things are just going well.

I love you all. Thanks so much for the email, and the pictures, and the love.

Here's a picture that explains a reason I'm very happy for a car.

Love,

Peter

Word for the week: moving

Hey hey hey!

I was in fact transferred. So, my companion will be staying in the ward, and he'll actually be training a new missionary. I am now back up in my first zone, although I'm not actually in the same town. I'm now in a Spanish(!) ward that covers the north end of the mission. The ward is enormous and we cover part of it. So, this'll be a whole new adventure. I'm still working on the spanish, obviously, but hopefully I'll be able to get into the swing of things relatively quickly.

I have not seen much of Denver proper yet, mainly because I haven't served in an area that covers downtown Denver, and we really aren't allowed to go outside our zone, even on P-day. It's definitely a possibility that I will.

What we on our day off depends a lot on the area. So, in my last area, it was mostly shopping, email, sit at home for awhile unless there's some sort of like zone activity, because there wasn't much to do and we couldn't get anywhere on our bikes. It was fairly similar in the first area, although we would get together as a district a bit more often, largely because there were a lot more elders. I'm not sure what we'll do up here, but I at least hope it'll be a bit more eventful, at the very least because we actually have a car.

Okay, my week: It was a pretty good week, although a little bit slower than normal. We started it off with a family home evening with a member couple that was moving that week, which was a lot of fun. On Wednesday we helped them move their furniture and stuff to a storage unit, as part of their preparations to move to Turkey(!). I guess he got a job teaching English at a university in a town called Gaziantep. As a like thank-you gift for helping them move, they gave both of us books that we aren't allowed to read! For my companion, "The Way to Perfection", by Joseph Fielding Smith, and to me, "The Brothers Karamazov". I'm still deciding whether to ship it home, or just carry it around with me, and not read it :).

Tuesday was a little bit rough--a couple of people that we can usually always count on being there when we drop by weren't, so we had to do some tracting. It was okay, but we always like to do other things that could possibly be more effective.

Lots of service this week--we volunteered at Covenant Cupboard and project c.u.r.e., and also helped with two moves, one moving out and one moving in. 

Saturday, we met with the couple that we've been teaching all 7 weeks of this transfer, and taught the word of wisdom with them. It went really pretty well--a couple of hang-ups with drinking (I don't think I've ever really realized what an incredibly social thing it is), but they're going to be awesome. Hopefully they're going to be married on the first of March (they set it up, and then told us--we were like super freaking excited when they told us.), and hopefully I'll be able to make it down for that.

And then right after that lesson, we had our transfer meeting thing, which was kind of crazy. We found out where everyone was going, took pictures, signed "transfer journals", which are basically like yearbooks without the pictures, and generally had a good time.

Sunday was the super bowl, which meant that it would probably not be the best day for missionary work, especially considering the result :). So, I spent most of the day packing, and then said good-bye to a few people, and had a like two-hour dinner with a member. Then, yesterday, it was transfers. It's always a little crazy the first couple of days, but I'm sure I'll get settled in pretty dang quick. My companion seems really cool, and things should go really well.

Oh, fun fact--today we actually helped the senior missionary who is the housing coordinator move furniture and stuff into an apartment nearby ours (oh yeah, I'm living in an apartment now), and afterwards, he took us out to lunch! It was awesome!

It is a big change, but things seem like they'll be fine here. Not really too excited or sad about it. My new companion has been out six more weeks than me, although I think we go home at the same time. He's from SoCal and has been serving in this ward his whole mission.

I still have my bike, but I don't anticipate using it anytime soon. But yeah, right now it's just sitting in the apartment.

We're teaching mostly in spanish--the typical situation (at least as far as I've seen in the like three appointments I've been to so far) is that the kids will speak to us in english, parents in spanish. I understand the lessons, for the most part. The tricky thing right now is getting out what I want to say, but I'm sure that'll come.

There are eight missionaries serving in our ward: four sisters, four elders. There is definitely only room for me and my companion in our apartment.

I'm anticipating we'll be fed as much, if not more, than in other wards. I have heard that if there is one thing spanish members are good at, it's feeding the missionaries.

Welp, I think that's about all. Love you all, miss you. Thanks for the pictures!

Love,

Peter

Something terrible we did to ourselves during companionship study on Saturday. Angel food cake+Oreos=delicious